Sunnyside Elementary School

We have our son in kindergarten at Sunnyside and the experience has been great. The teacher communicates with us about our son's progress, the environment feels safe and fun, and there are plenty of opportunities for parents to visit kids in school. The teacher uses an app to keep us informed on our child's progress and the classroom activities and even shares photos with us. It's great! The principal Ms. Tortora constantly sends out voice messages to keep parent's updated and is very approachable and kind. The district is reorganizing the grades among the school buildings for the 2017-2018 school year which means our 1st grader will now need to go to Jefferson. We'll see how that goes.

My family is new to this area. We enrolled our twins into Kindergarten last November and they were welcomed with open arms by the principal and teachers. The communication with parents is very open and effective. My children are learning rapidly and they feel safe. I was considering enrolling my children in a private school but I have confidence that they will do well here at Sunnyside.

This school makes me hate that I purchased a home in this area. The whole process of transferring my child into the district and dealing with a non-responsive, less than patient 4th grade teacher has given me nothing but headaches the past 5 months. It seems the students are constantly being thrown material that surpasses their level of understanding just to say it was covered; however they are not mastering the material. A teacher even admitted that majority of the students aren't testing well on the mandated tests, and they are rigorous....well, shouldn't that raise some concerns about their approach??? Especially since it seems test scores in the school are on a continous decline based on the Illinois report card site. I spend my evenings re-teaching most work that comes home. I have expressed concerns with son's teacher about his lack of progress as he seems to have dramatically declined overall since attending this school, and he has been insisting that he hates the school and wants to go back to his old school. While I tried to be patient and give my son time to adjust, thinking he would get over it, I now hate the school, its nonchalant principal, and son's teacher who lacks patience with the children and does not respond to my questions or concerns. I have NEVER felt the need to send my child to private school, but I now feel it is a necessity, including never allowing my 2 younger sons to ever set foot in this place.

I am pleased with Ms. Tortora and Ms. Kohout. They are really trying to promote a positive attitude. They bullying is taken very serious and doesn't seem to be a major problem. The teachers really are fantastic and determined to help the kids. I gave it 3 stars because of SOME of the horrible parents.